GOP's Brady whacks Madigan, proposes term limits

September 22, 2009

State Sen. Bill Brady, a Republican candidate for governor, today assailed the control Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan has over state government and proposed term limits, a return to multi-member House districts and campaign finance reforms.

"We have reached a point where too few people control too much and the power is too concentrated," Brady said. "There's no question that the speaker of the House, representing little over 100,000 people, has had absolute control over the state of Illinois. He's been able to do that for nearly three decades and it's time for that to end."

Brady proposed a combination of state constitutional amendments and legislation to implement what he called his government reform package.

But the Bloomington Republican, who has spent seven years in the House and a like amount of time in the Senate, acknowledged it was unlikely that the Democratic-dominated legislature would put the constitutional changes on the November 2010 general election ballot. Madigan, of Chicago, has served as speaker of the House for 24 of the past 26 years.